Jon Talton's many novels include the David Mapstone Mysteries and the thriller Deadline Man. He is also a veteran journalist, and a former business editor of the Cincinnati Enquirer.Talton's latest David Mapstone Mystery is High Country Nocturne.
Recently I asked the author about what he was reading. His reply:
Normally, after finishing a new mystery, I would be taking a spin through the best new mystery writing. But I have been commissioned to write a history of Phoenix. So, like my character David Mapstone, I have switched into historian mode. This has required reading and re-reading histories of Phoenix and Arizona. The best is Philip VenderMeer’s Desert Visions and the Making of Phoenix.Visit Jon Talton's website.Then I have been working on primary sources and with archivists. It amazes me how much more there is to learn about a city I think I know so well, and of course this gives me material for future Mapstone Mysteries.
My pleasure reading is Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Day’s of the Soviet Empire, by David Remnick and winner of the 1994 Pulitzer Prize. Despite the passage of time, the book is a riveting read and explains much about Russia today. My fiction reading has been confined to short stories in Paris Review, Tin House and n+1. Getting back to mystery reading should come later this year.
My Book, The Movie: High Country Nocturne.
--Marshal Zeringue
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